Treasurer's Report

March/April, 2004
Elements of the Budget, Part II
Part I ... Part III ... Part IV
By Tong Lee

In this Part III of my series of articles, I want to discuss the elite athlete budget that has often been a topic of public discussion at table tennis forums. I have read of inaccurate statements made about this budget. I have read of seemingly good proposals on what we should do for elite athlete development. However, many of these proposals were made without knowledge or consideration of the constraints imposed by the elite athlete budget, and thus they were unrealistic or unattainable. Sometimes, they gave the erroneous impression that the Board wouldn’t do anything about them, when the fact was that it couldn’t. Hopefully, this article will provide the membership with a better understanding of the elite athlete budget.

Most of USOC funding to USATT is composed of two components – joint marketing and base funding. USATT has discretionary use of joint marketing funding for developing the sport, but is obligated to appropriate at least 80% of base funding on elite athletes. This appropriation becomes the Elite Athlete Committee (EAC) budget. The recent practice is that the EAC, in consultation with the executive director who is an ex-officio member of the EAC, decides on how to spend its allocated budget. It prepares a budget listing the activities and programs for the year and the amount to be spent on each. Staff and the treasurer monitor the expenses to ensure that the budget is followed as submitted. USOC also monitors the spending through our Sports Partnership managers and its Audit Division also conducts an audit. If its auditor finds that insufficient money was spent on elite athletes, then USATT has to return unspent funds to the USOC. Thus, there is no motivation for USATT officials to shortchange the athletes by diverting their USOC money for other purposes.

The EAC budget is dependent on the amount of base funding received and this varies from year to year in an Olympic quadrennial cycle. The amount of base funding is backend-loaded. For example, in the current Olympic cycle, it ranges from about $147,000 in 2001 to $250,000 in this Olympic year. 80% of $147,000 is less than $120,000 and this explains why in 2001, some people felt that athletes receive little financial support. Moreover, money from the EAC budget is not exclusively used to fund athletes for training camps and for trips to compete domestically or internationally. It is used for other expenses such as to pay for the airfare and hospitality of team leaders and coaches when they accompany athletes for training camps and tournaments, for compensation of coaches, for maintenance of a training center, and for expenses incurred in Team Trials, among other things. An elaborate Team Trials that includes an additional qualifier might seem like a good move, but the thousands used to run the qualifier could otherwise be used to send some deserving athletes to an international competition. Anyway, that’s the decision of the EAC, not the Board or its officers.

The goal of USOC for all national governing bodies of Olympic sports is to win Olympic medals. USOC wants base funding money to be spent in the pursuit of this goal, and gives each NGB a lot of discretion in deciding the means to this end. I learned from a high performance/athlete development pipeline seminar at the Olympic Training Center that USOC’s recommendation is very reasonable and flexible and it is simply this: Identify who you think could win an Olympic medal and when, and then spend our money accordingly to help them reach that goal. If X has a shot in 2004, then spend more money on X in 2004. If Y has a shot in 2012, then develop an 8-year program and spend money on Y accordingly. There is no absolute equality among our elite athletes as far as base funding is concerned.

Realistically, it takes more than 80% or 100% of USOC base funding to financially support any athlete to reach the podium. We can’t print money and that is why have taken bold and giant steps to increase revenues and profits in various ways so that we can not only continue to increase, but increase more rapidly, funding the means to that ultimate goal of gold.